Notable deaths last week

• James Salter, the prize-winning author acclaimed for his sophisticated, granular prose and sobering insights in "Light Years," "A Sport and a Pastime" and other fiction, has died at age 90.

Salter, a lifelong brooder about impermanence and mortality, was the kind of writer whose language exhilarated readers even when relating the most distressing narratives, from the erotic classic "A Sport and a Pastime" to the stories in the 2005 release "Last Night" to the 2013 novel "All That Is."

In a statement released by publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Salter's editor Robin Desser called him a "great American writer who spoke to us in a voice always pure and true."

Salter, a native of Manhattan, didn't enjoy great commercial success but was highly admired by critics and such peers as Jhumpa Lahiri, Richard Ford and the late Peter Matthiessen, his friend and longtime neighbor on Long Island. He won the PEN/Faulkner prize for the 1988 collection "Dusk and Other Stories" and received two lifetime achievement honors for short story writing, the Rea Award and the PEN/Malamud prize.

Few authors compared to Salter in economy and style. Lahiri was among those who thought he wrote some of the most perfect sentences in the English language.

"Reading Salter taught me to boil down my writing to its essence," Lahiri once wrote. "To insist upon the right words, and to remember that less is more. That great art can be wrought from quotidian life."

"A Sport and a Pastime" was a brief, poetic, almost supernaturally sexy novel about a Yale dropout and his French girlfriend. Rejected by several publishers before George Plimpton agreed to release it, in 1967, through The Paris Review.

• Ralph Roberts, a cable pioneer who built Comcast from a small cable TV system in Mississippi into an entertainment and communications behemoth, has died. He was 95.

He was in his 40s when he began his career in the fledgling cable industry, with a $500,000 purchase of American Cable Systems, a company with 1,200 subscribers in Tupelo, Mississippi. A string of acquisitions followed. Roberts changed the name of the company to Comcast and ran it until he was in his 80s.

He handed control of the company to one of his sons, Brian, who is now Comcast's chairman and CEO, while keeping the title of chairman emeritus.

Roberts, who was known for wearing a bowtie to work every day, had grand ambitions. "Ralph was always about what comes next, what's the next deal," said Steve Burke, CEO of NBCUniversal, who has worked at Comcast for 17 years. "He gave his DNA to his son Brian, who has always been a real ambitious person for the company."

Now Comcast is the nation's largest provider of cable TV and home Internet service as well as the owner of NBCUniversal, home of the NBC network, a slew of cable channels, film studio Universal Pictures and theme parks.

• For decades, Blaze Starr performed her elaborate striptease act at a club she owned in Baltimore and in hundreds of other nightspots. She became perhaps the country's most notorious stripper in the late 1950s when her affair with Louisiana's governor, Earl Long, became a national scandal. It was a story later dramatized in a 1989 film.

Starr, who said she regretted nothing in her adventurous life, died at her home in Wilsondale, West Virginia. She was 83.

• Laura Myers, a veteran Associated Press reporter and editor who led the news cooperative's coverage of foreign affairs as the country reeled from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and spent the past five years covering politics for Nevada's largest newspaper, has died at 53 from colon cancer.

"Laura was ferociously interested in the world and in the stories people had to tell. She had left journalism to go to film school and luckily, I was able to talk her into coming back to help with coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the AP.

"She worked relentlessly with reporters and editors in the field, asking smart questions, stitching together bits of intelligence from reporters scattered around the world to frame interesting, intelligent stories. She made us better for a very long time and we were lucky to be her colleague."

The Las Vegas native was the political editor for the AP during the 2000 presidential election.

• Danny Villanueva, who was one of the NFL's first Latino kickers and a pioneer of Spanish-language television, has died. He was 77.

Born to migrant missionary workers in eastern New Mexico, Villanueva went on to attend New Mexico State on a football scholarship. After graduating in 1961, he played for the Los Angeles Rams, where he was nicknamed "El Kickador." Bullfighting music was played whenever he walked onto the field.

Villanueva also played with the Dallas Cowboys. His last game ended up being the championship against Green Bay at Lambeau Field in 1967. He and his teammates suffered through the brutally cold temperatures that day in Wisconsin.

• John David Crow, the bruising running back who won the 1957 Heisman Trophy with Texas A&M before a Pro Bowl career in the NFL, has died. He was 79.

Crow was the first Heisman winner for the Aggies, who were coached at the time by Paul "Bear" Bryant. During the 1957 season, Bryant famously said: "If John David Crow doesn't win the Heisman Trophy, they ought to stop giving it."

He had 129 carries for 562 yards and six touchdowns during his Heisman season. He also threw five touchdown passes and played defense, where he grabbed five interceptions. He ran for 1,465 yards and 14 touchdowns and caught four touchdowns in his three-year career at Texas A&M.

He lived in College Station in his later years and delighted in spending time with Johnny Manziel the year the quarterback joined him as a Heisman winner. In an interview with The Associated Press just before Manziel won the award, Crow was reminded of Bryant's famous words about him and asked if he felt the same way about Johnny Football.

Crow was the second pick in the 1958 NFL draft and was a four-time Pro Bowl selection in a professional career with the Chicago/ St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers. Crow piled up 4,963 yards rushing, 3,699 yards receiving and threw for 759 yards in his 11-year NFL career.

He coached with Bryant at Alabama and was the head coach at Northeast Louisiana University, now known as Louisiana-Monroe, from 1975-80, where he went 20-34-1.

He later returned to Texas A&M where he worked in various positions in the athletic department until his retirement in 2001.

• Actor and comedian Rick Ducommun, known for his role in the 1989 film "The 'Burbs," has died at age 62, his family said Thursday.

Following "The 'Burbs," which became a cult classic, Ducommun was featured in "Gremlins 2: The New Batch," the Bill Murray hit "Groundhog Day" and "Ghost in the Machine."

Ducommun also played small parts in films, beginning with "No Small Affair." He also acted in "Little Monsters," "Spaceballs," "Die Hard," "The Hunt for Red October," "The Experts," "The Last Boy Scout," "Encino Man," "Last Action Hero," and "Scary Movie."

• Hugh D. Auchincloss III, stepbrother and lifelong friend of Jacqueline Kennedy, has died. He was 87.

Auchincloss, who was also a stepsibling to the writer Gore Vidal and who was known by the nickname Yusha, died Saturday of B-cell lymphoma at his home at Hammersmith Farm in Rhode Island, according to his children. The property in Newport is where John F. Kennedy spent time during his presidency.

• Nelson Doubleday Jr., who co-owned the New York Mets with Fred Wilpon for 16 years after selling his family's book publishing business, has died. He was 81.

Doubleday was the grandson of Frank Doubleday, who co- founded Doubleday & Co. in 1897, and a descendant of Abner Doubleday, who received initial credit for inventing baseball in a Cooperstown, New York, cow pasture in 1839.

Doubleday & Co. bought a 95 percent stake in the Mets in 1980 for $21.1 million, with the other 5 percent going to Wilpon, the team's current owner. When the company was sold to Bertelsmann AG in 1986, it sold its share of the team for $80.8 million to Wilpon and Doubleday, who became equal partners.

A stormy 16-year relationship between the two partners ensued and, following a lawsuit, Doubleday sold his share to Wilpon in 2002.

• James B. "Jimmy" Lee, the colorful JPMorgan Chase & Co. rainmaker whose pioneering work in the loan market helped propel an era of Wall Street deals, died Wednesday morning. He was 62.

Lee felt shortness of breath while on a treadmill at his home in Darien, Connecticut, and was taken to a hospital, where he died, according to a person briefed on the matter.

At an investment bank that often emphasized its team and resources over individual stars, Lee was the exception, with a charismatic personality and Rolodex known throughout Wall Street. He worked for JPMorgan and its predecessors since the mid-1970s, eventually running its investment bank before becoming a company vice chairman and continuing to garner some of its biggest deals. A rival banker once quipped that one of Jaime Dimon's most important tasks every year was to make sure Lee stayed happy.

• Suleyman Demirel was a master pragmatist whose remarkable talent for staying on top of Turkish politics saw him survive two coups, serve seven terms as Turkey's prime minister and cap his career with the presidency.

Unusually in Turkey's polarized political space, Demirel - who died early Wednesday at the age of 90 - sought the common ground, easily abandoned grudges and occasionally stepped aside when under pressure.

• Ron Clarke, one of Australia's greatest distance runners and the man who lit the cauldron at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, died Wednesday at the age of 78.

Clarke set 17 world records, including 12 during a 44-day tour of Europe in 1965, nine years after he had been invited as a 19-year-old to light the Olympic flame at the Melbourne Games.

He competed at the 1964 Tokyo and 1968 Mexico City Olympics, but his only medal was a bronze in the 10,000 meters in 1964.

At Mexico City, Clarke collapsed at the finish line and came close to dying from altitude sickness during the 10,000 meters. He finished in in sixth place, but later said he could not recall anything about the final stretches of the race.

• The mother of NBA great Charles Barkley, Charcey Glenn, has died at her home in Alabama.

The Jefferson County Medical Examiner's Office says Glenn died Friday in her hometown of Leeds, east of Birmingham. She was 73.

• Zito, a midfielder on Brazil's first two World Cup winning teams, has died at 82.

The defensive midfielder - whose full name was Jose Ely de Miranda - played 52 times for the national soccer team, which has gone on to become the most-successful in World Cup history. Zito starred alongside Pele on the 1958 and 1962 squads, scoring a goal in the 1962 final.

• John S. Carroll, former editor of the Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times, which won 13 Pulitzer Prizes during his five-year tenure, has died. He was 73.

Carroll died Sunday morning at his home in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was once editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, said his wife, Lee Carroll. He had been suffering from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a rare and debilitating neurological disorder.

• Monica Lewis, a singer who worked alongside Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman, acted in films and, for many years, was the voice of a popular series of animated commercials for Chiquita bananas, died June 12 at her home in Woodland Hills, California. She was 93.

Lewis, a versatile performer with dimpled good looks, began her career as a jazz singer in her teens. She appeared at New York's Stork Club and on radio before auditioning to replace Peggy Lee in Goodman's band in 1943.